The manufacture and use of slingshots are ancient arts. The typical design of a conventional slingshot includes a user-graspable handle from which a pair of upwardly extending arms extend, the entire structure having the general appearance of an enlarged letter "Y". To the upper tips or ends of the arms is attached an elastic material having, at its center, means for holding or retaining an object to be propelled. In operation, a user or shooter grasps the handle with one hand and pulls back on the elastic material by holding the object in the retaining means with the other hand to thereby displace the object in a direction substantially opposite that of the target. As the retaining means is thus rearwardly displaced, the elastic material is placed in tension, storing potential energy in the elastic material. When the retaining means is released, and the object is propelled toward the target under the urgency of the elastic material as the same contracts from its stretched position and thereby releases the stored potential energy as kinetic energy.
Since the elastic material is an integral part and element of the slingshot, the forward thrust of the elastic material through the nip defined between the two arms after release of the projectile is typically followed by a violent downward snap or recoil which can easily bruise the fingers of the shooter or otherwise inflict pain and/or injury, thereby presenting a safety hazard to the user. Moreover, since the object or projectile is often only loosely held, if at all, in the retaining means, there is a tendency for the object to unintendedly positionally move or shift prior to or in the course of its release and forwardly-driven motion. Such positional displacement may disadvantageously affect the trajectory or direction along which the projectile is propelled--potentially resulting in injury to bystanders or others in the areas of the user and/or of the target--or, in extreme cases, may cause the projectile to strike or impact the slingshot itself and/or the hands or limbs of the user and thereby be diverted into injurious contact with the user or innocent bystanders. In addition, failure to place and maintain the object in the exact center of the elastic member or retaining means will cause an uneven distribution of propelling forces to be imparted to the projectile and be wasteful of effort in that not all of the stored potential energy in the elastic material will be transferred to the object, thus limiting its range.
Various attempts to improve the safety, accuracy and range of slingshot-type devices are evident in the prior art.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 3,875,923 to Horel discloses a slingshot that is provided with an arm brace so that the slingshot can be held with enhanced steadiness over like devices known prior thereto. The slingshot includes an extension disposed at the top of the hand grip for protecting the fingers from the elastic member after its object-propelling release. The Horel device nevertheless suffers from many of the same drawbacks as prior art slingshots. In particular, since the elastic member is part of the slingshot and the object is placed in a retaining means, the Horel slingshot does nothing to improve the accuracy with which an object is propelled or the various other problems inherent in prior art devices with an unintendedly shifting or initially uncentered projectile.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,708,429 to Tufts is directed to an elastic band-type gun in which the projectile is a ball having a single elastic member secured thereto. A loop at the free end of the elastic band is secured to the end of the gun; the ball is pulled back, and elastic band is stretched, until the ball is seated in a recess of the gun where it is retained by a lever. Upon pulling of the trigger, the lever is lifted thereby freeing the ball for forward movement as the elastic band returns to its untensioned state. The Tufts gun is a relatively complicated mechanism and is therefore correspondingly expensive to manufacture. It also suffers many of the same drawbacks noted above with respect to prior art slingshots. Specifically, the single elastic member on the projectile causes it to be propelled with only limited control of direction and trajectory. In addition, the Tufts device has but a limited range given the presence of only a single elastic member for propelling the trajectory toward a target.